https://www.reddit.com/r/thegrandtour/comments/t3vbce/clarkson_reviews_the_bmw_m4_competition/
Clarkson reviews the BMW M4 Competition
This Beemer has me beaming ear to ear
The Clarkson Review: BMW M4 Competition
By Jeremy Clarkson (
Sunday Times, Feb. 27)
As I drove over to see friends in a nearby Cotswold village the other morning, all seemed to be well. The sky was blue, snowdrops were beginning to emerge and there was a definite sense that although it was still the middle of January, spring was just around the corner.
And yet something was troubling me. I was being tickled by the motoring world’s equivalent of a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it tingle in the left arm. You know what it’s like when you walk into a northern pub and everyone’s laughing and joking and it’s warm and the beer’s good. But you can just sort of sense that, somewhere in the steamed-up background, Begbie’s getting ready to lob his pint glass over the balcony. And that soon you’ll have a split lip and a snooker cue up your jacksie. It was that feeling.
I can’t say therefore in actual words what caused me to do this — 44 years of experience probably — but on the long hill down from the Churchill Road to Cornwell I carefully lifted my foot from the accelerator and placed an exploratory kiss on the brake pedal. It was the noise that gave it away first. A sort of shooshing sound, followed by the slow-motion staccato of the car’s antilock braking system fighting a losing battle with a surface that plainly had the mu characteristics of wet soap in a puddle of Fairy Liquid. In short, I was driving on black ice.
And I was in a BMW, which was not good because BMW arguably makes the worst winter cars of them all. If it drops below 15 degrees centigrade a Beemer will get stuck in an underground car park. BMWs start to pirouette on the motorway in September, four months before the first snowflake actually arrives.
I’ve seen a BMW do a 360 simply because the person in the passenger seat was reading a skiing holiday brochure.
But — and I’m sorry for the anticlimax here — I was OK. I steered carefully to the side of the road, where there was a grass verge so that two of the tyres would have some kind of adhesion. And then, after stopping and taking stock, I continued with my journey at approximately 1mph.
No one else was doing the same thing. At the bottom of the hill there was a Peugeot, all airbags and broken headlamps buried in a tree, and just a few hundred yards further on a respectable, fully cardiganed lady standing at the side of the road, flapping frantically to alert me to the fact that, round the corner, she’d had a head-on with someone in a Vauxhall.
I stopped to make sure this doyenne of country living was all right and she looked as though she couldn’t quite believe what had happened. In her mind she was more likely to catch the clap than have a crash. And yet somehow there she was.
I started to wonder, half a mile later, as I passed an upside-down van in a field, that maybe we have lost the ability to drive on ice. But then I thought, no, it’s not that. All these crashes had happened because people today simply don’t know what it’s like to drive a car when it’s below freezing out there. To them black ice is as alien as an actual alien. This is a plus point for global warming, an upside and something we should be talking about. And it’s a plus point for BMW too. It’ll certainly get them out of a hole. Well, a ditch at any rate.
Interestingly, the car I was driving — an M4 Competition — had been fitted with optional four-wheel drive. Which may be of some use if you live in Helsinki or Val d’Isère. But when you’re going downhill on sheet ice, you might as well rely on the local ley lines for your health and safety. Frankly, I’d spend the £2,765 it costs on an old pick-up truck and use that on the one day a decade when it snows. Because, let’s face it, this is an M4. It should be rear drive only.
I’m not going to mess about here. This is a sensational car. There are purists, I know, who lament the passing of the old V8, but the twin turbo straight six we get now is so smooth and so sonorous and, let’s be honest, it churns out a smidge more than 500 horsepower, which is always going to be enough.
I’d go further and say that any more renders a car too scary to be much fun most of the time. With 500 horses you can put your foot down for long periods of time, in most of the gears, and shriek with joy, not terror.
The last M4 I drove, however, was fitted with a steering system that was such hard work, I never really wanted to drive it quickly. This new one, though. It’s like you’re being pulled around on God’s apron strings. It’s so communicative and so perfectly judged and so exciting. As exciting as the early M cars? No. Of course not. Nothing is that exciting any more, but this new breed manages to be 90 per cent as good while being 10,000 times more refined.
That’s this car’s party piece really. Its ability to be fast and thrilling when you’re in the mood but calm and dignified when you’re not. Even in nutter bastard mode it’s never unduly uncomfortable or noisy. We see this thinking with the gearbox too, which is a full torque converter auto, not one of those dual clutch jobs that everyone thought were going to be the future. Partly this is because full autos are so light now. But mostly because they’re much cheaper to make.
Inside you get just about the best seats ever to envelop my nether regions and a dash that even I, in my advanced years, could operate. Which is why I was able to work out that you can choose two perfect set-ups — one for fast driving and one for going home after work — and then you can access either by simply pressing a red button on the steering wheel.
Another feature I found was a tool that gives you marks for the quality and duration of your “drifts”. We live in a YouTube era now and this is the sort of thing that matters: watching kids hit trees. It’s the future.
The rest of us? Well, the M4 is so easy to get in and out of, you know, the back seats are genuinely useable and the boot’s big too. The price isn’t bad either.
I genuinely am struggling to think of something I didn’t like on this car. Maybe the styling’s a bit off. It’s like the designer got embarrassed about the showiness of the front and became a bit timid when doing the back. But this is only a small thing and you don’t even notice it if you go for the convertible. Which is what I’d do.
It’s possible this will be the last M4 before electric drive takes over so I’m glad to see it going out in such style. Not with an especially large bang — although there may be a lightweight CSL version in the wings — but with a satisfied, arms folded, post Sunday lunch sense of a job really well done.
The Clarksometer
BMW G82 M4 Competition M xDrive Coupé S58 3.0
Engine: 2993cc, 6 cylinders, twin turbo, petrol
Power: 503bhp @ 6250rpm
Torque: 479 Ib ft @ 2750rpm
Acceleration: 0-62mph: 3.5sec
Top speed: 155mph
Fuel / CO2: 28mpg / 229g/km
Weight: 1,725kg
Price: £75,500
Release date:On sale now
Jeremy’s rating: ★★★★★
Head to head: BMW M4 Competition v Audi RS 5 Coupé
Price: £75,500 / £72,775
Power: 503bhp / 444bhp
0-60 mph: 3.5sec / 3.9sec
Top Speed: 155mph / 155mph
